Big Brother's Escrow Systems

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

> In message <9407291941.AA26399@netmail2.microsoft.com> Blanc Weber writes:
> > 
> > If a system contains "protocols especially suited for eventual 
> > mandatory use", like SKE, does this of necessity mean that the 
> > developers intended that it should become part of a nationally-mandated 
> > open avenue to spying on anyone who uses it?
> > 
> If you see a guy skulking in a dark alley with a gun, a knife, and a
> large club, do you debate whether he is of necessity about to use them?
> --
> Jim Dixon

Jim puts it rather more bluntly than I am comfortable with, but his
point is a good one.

Many of us style ourselves as free-market libertarians, so what
features a company puts into its products is not for us to interfere
with, in most cases.

But we are entering a new era, an era in which products are not just
developed and then dumped on the market for customers to either buy or
not but, but instead in which products are developed over many years,
with many inputs from customers, other companies, and even from
government agencies.

Analogies from Orwell are often dangerous, but this is one that may
apply. If a security camera company sells a 'baby monitor,' as many
companies do, there is no real threat, and no real worry.

Suppose that company works with government agencies, export
departments, and the police forces of various nations to develop a
tamper-resistant camera system that can be used to "voluntarily
escrow" the captured images. The advocates for the "voluntary" escrow
features, with transmission to a central facility, point out that some
people want their houses monitored while they're on vacation, that
some companies want remote monitoring, etc.

Is this something libertarians would want to interfere with?

A tough call, depending on the pressures put on the company by
government(s).

Pressures could mount to make the voluntary escrow not quite so
voluntary. Perhaps to protect children against abuse, to catch
pedophiles and sodomites, to detect pot-growing druggies, and to
monitor bomb-planting Muslims.

(I don't think such an Orwellian scheme would ever fly. I'm picking
this parallel to key escrow to make the points in an obvious way, to
explain how even free-market libertarians would oppose such gizmos.)

But surely we would be right in pointing out the possible misuses, the
ethical issues of some governments making the surveillance mandatory,
and the need for design features which prevent such a use?

If Microsoft or any other companies have already colluded with the
national security establishments of the U.S. or other countries to
limit strong crypto except where software key escrow is used, then
attacks on these companies are justified. By "attacks" I mean verbal
condemnation, boycotts, ostracism, workarounds to bypass the installed
systems, and other measures. I'm not saying that Microsoft has already
colluded, or that they plan to. As I've expressed here, there are
certainly signs that SKE is well-known to at least some folks within
Microsoft, which is in itself an interesting and perhaps telling fact.
The upcoming conference on international key escrow, and the talk
about export issues, suggests a deal may be in the works.

In short, I don't think we have to wait until a "completely voluntary"
(in the U.S., probably not in lots of other countries) software key
escrow system is deployed and ready to have a switch thrown to make
it mandatory before we begin to act.

I am not one of those libertarians who sophistically argues that
aggression has not occurred until the bullet is actually passing
through one's brain.

--Tim May


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